The breakdown of marriage and the American family has troubled our nation for many decades. Marriage is challenging, especially when so few people have the tools to make it work. Studies show, few couples receive pre-marital counseling. Massive numbers of people don’t have positive examples of healthy family life, too. Accordingly, divorce rates remain high and marriage rates are the lowest in our nation’s history.
The consensus among experts is that healthy marriage leads to healthy people, healthy families, and healthy children. As the Heritage Foundation argues, “Families are the building blocks of civilization. They are personal relationships, but they greatly shape and serve the public good. Strong families make for strong communities. Conversely, family breakdown harms society as a whole.”[i]
Consider a few additional facts:
- “Almost a quarter of U.S. children under the age of 18 live with one parent and no other adults (23%), more than three times the share of children around the world who do so (7%).”[ii] The authors of The Boy Crises claim the number is nearly one-third in the United States.[iii]
- 85 percent of inmates grew up in fatherless homes.[iv]
- “The median wealth of married couples is almost four times greater than that of single divorced parents.”[v]
- Grade point averages among children whose parents are divorced are lower compared to parents who are married.[vi]
- “In 1960, 72% of all adults ages 18 and older were married. Today, it’s 49%. In 1960, the average age at which men married was 23. Today it’s 29. The consequences of this are negative across the income spectrum, but they are especially so for those in the lower and middle classes.”[vii]
- “Decades of statistics have shown that, on average, married couples have better physical health, more financial stability, and greater social mobility than unmarried people.”[viii]
Enter Tim and Kathy Keller. Tim Keller and his wife live in NYC and have been charting a path for single Christians for decades. They are also biblical scholars and parents. For those reasons, they are uniquely qualified to explain Christian marriage.
The most salient point they make is this: People should be living their pre-married life with the intention of being a good spouse one day. The decisions people make before marriage will either help or hamper their success in marriage. Also, if you know what you’re looking for, it helps weed out incompatible people. It’s like obtaining a professional degree. To become a lawyer, people attend seven years of college, take exams, and train with internships. Having a good marriage requires a similar level of devotion, knowledge, and training.
The book is focused on instructing couples on Christian marriage, but it’s also on helping people create a healthy marriage in general. There is practical advice from top to bottom. These nuggets of wisdom will help anyone, Christian or not:
- Divorce rates are high, but “if you are a reasonably well – educated person with a decent income, come from an intact family and are religious, and marry after twenty-five without having a baby first, your chances of divorce are low.”
- Married people are physically and emotionally healthier.
- Searching for a soul mate is the wrong idea because most people are looking for something that does not exist.
- Co-habitation prior to marriage leads to more broken relationships.
- Marriage is where men become masculine, which is part of mastering self-discipline and self-control.
- You don’t really know the person you marry, and people change, but the point in marriage is not to remain who you were, but to be re-made together.
Keller’s practical advice matches his spiritual advice on each point. The overarching theme of the book is centered on Ephesians 5:18-33. Keller explains the text thoroughly, unveiling the high calling husbands and wives are asked to answer. If more people understood these ideas, it’s hard not to see how families and marriages would be massively improved. If young people had the correct frame of mind before they began dating, would divorce rates and rates of single mother homes plummet?
The Meaning of Marriage ultimately contributes to helping people realize the importance of marriage and how to do it well. The breakdown of the family is causing widespread problems throughout American society – people suffer emotionally, financially, and socially because of it. What Keller does is offer a blueprint for those seeking to do marriage well. If every teenager read this book, America’s future would be bright.
[i] The Heritage Foundation, Why the Declining Marriage Rate Affects Everyone
[ii] Pew Research Center, U.S. has world’s highest rate of children living in a single-parent households, Stephanie Kramer 2022
[iii] The Boy Crises, Warren Farrell and John Grey
[iv] The Boy Crises, Warren Farrell and John Grey
[v] Patrick F. Fagan, Family and Faith: The Roots of Prosperity, Stability and Freedom
[vi] Patrick F. Fagan, Family and Faith: The Roots of Prosperity, Stability and Freedom
[vii] Brad Wilcox, PragerU video – https://www.prageru.com/video/is-marriage-good-for-men
[viii] The Heritage Foundation, Why the Declining Marriage Rage Affects Everyone
